Monday, June 23, 2014

Twenty years ago today, on June 23, 1994, the American express parcel service Federal Express unveiled its new shortened name and smart logo to much pomp and circumstance. Ahead of the unveiling, the new logo had been painted on an MD-11 jet and flown to the Memphis International Airport to be the centrepiece of the unveiling ceremony. This could be watched by thousands of its employees and spawned lots of news articles. One estimate said the event reached 88 million people.

Federal Express started operations in 1973 after a Yale student realised you could compete with the post office by transporting express packages on jetliners. It grew quickly and eventually "fed-exing" became synonymous with "sending packages fast", allowing Federal Express to join the short list of company names that had become verbs. But as competition grew it needed to differentiate itself to maintain its lead. The namechange was preceded by two years of extensive research both internally and with Landor Associates.

But the end result was remarkably simple. The name was shortened to the already established shorthand. The logo was a rendition of the name in simple letters with the now famous hidden arrow. For plane liveries they opted for white fuselages instead of the purple that had dominated up until then. Landor also came up with the tagline "The World On Time" which reinforced a worldwide reach and focus on punctuality.

For the last few years, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, has boldly marketed itself as the "Capital of Scandinavia". This has probably been seen as unnecessarily arrogant and brash to those living in other Scandinavian capitals, like Copenhagen and Oslo. But Stockholm are sticking to it and last year they introduced a refreshed version of this branding, created by Essen International.

That agency was also involved in branding the city of Stockholm (Stockholms stad) last year. To clarify, the Stockholms stad project mostly concerned communication from the city of Stockholm to its inhabitants. The "Capital of Scandinavia" branding targets business and tourists from around the world and concerns all the 52 municipalities that make up Sweden's capital region.

Essen's branding unites the branding for the city and the region with a common visual expression with similar colours and typefaces. It is built around the already established crown symbol and designed to work in a digital environment.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The Museum of Warsaw (Muzeum Warszawy) is an historical museum located in the old town center of Warsaw. Formerly known as Historical Museum of Warsaw, it recently unveiled a new visual identity, developed by Warsaw-based graphic designer Ania Światłowska.

The new symbol features a highly abstracted version of a syrenka, a mermaid holding a sword and a shield as found on Warsaw's coat of arms. It should symbolise how Warsaw's past meets its future and communicate openness and modernity. The typography uses Good, a typeface designed by another Varsovian, typographer Łukasz Dziedzic.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

UK Broadband is a company that owns significant slices of radio spectrum suitable for 4G LTE use. Earlier this month, on June 2, the company launched a new mobile broadband service in London called Relish. The brand identity for this service, including name, positioning and design, was created by Turquoise.

The new service is focused on ease of use rather than speed. Turquoise developed an illustration style to portray the various uses people may have for mobile broadband.

Ingenico is a French company with global reach that provides technology solutions for electronic transactions. Earlier this month, on June 4, the company launched a new visual identity and launched a new brand architecture which sees it being renamed Ingenico Group. Ingenico now describes itself as "the global leader in seamless payment", reflecting and evolution from being mostly about payment terminals.

The new brand identity was designed by Unlimi-ted. The new logo are quite straight-forward and a departure from the red script logo used up until now.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Max Telecom is a Bulgarian telecommunications company that began operation in 2007 with the launch of a 4G network. Last month, on May 20, it introduced a new 4G LTE network and took the opportunity to also launch a new corporate identity.

The company will now be marketed simply as "Max". Most applications seem to use Museo as company typeface.

Ritmoson is a Mexico-based music channel available in several Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. This month, on June 2, the channel introduced a fresh new look to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The new look launches with the slogan El Cambio es Ritmoson ("The Change is Ritmoson").

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Major Indian IT firm InfoTech Enterprises changed its name last month. Since May 7, it has been known as Cyient. The new brand was developed with Wolff Olins who have been working with the company since 2012.

Cyient numbers many well-known companies among its clients and works on a consultancy basis together with its clients. This was expressed by a new slogan, "Designing Tomorrow Together". The strong new wordmark features an "enhancer dot" that appears throughout a custom typeface.

Last week, the Polish Promotion Council, made up of representatives from different government ministries, launched a new marketing campaign that will market the country to foreign investors. It came with a new brand identity, developed by Saffron Brand Consultants.

The new brand comes with the tagline "Spring into new" which reflects the country's transformation since the fall of Communism 25 years ago. The logo features a stylised spring which represent a driver for positive change, dynamism, creativity and innovation. Work on the new identity is ongoing.

Friday, June 6, 2014

A National Olympic Committee (NOC) organises a country's participation in the Olympic games. For some reason three different European NOCs unveiled new logos about a month ago. It might be interesting to compare them by rounding them up in one post.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Swiss Wine Promotion is an organisation that markets Swiss wines. Last month, on May 20, it unveiled a new visual identity, created by Tyler Brûlé's Zurich-based firm Winkreative.

The new symbol avoids the solid-but-boring route of using the Swiss cross. Instead, it is made up of lines, inspired by the fractured nature of Swiss wineyards. Switzerland has six official wine regions and the lines are organised into six fields.

The main colour is a red tint which is slightly darker than the red of the Swiss flag and closer to red wine. The typography uses Brauer Neue Bold and Feijoa Italic.

The national Flemish opera and ballet houses, Vlaamse Opera and Koninklijk Ballet van Vlaanderen, were merged at the beginning of this year into a single organisation dubbed Kunsthuis. The individual ensembles will coexist, but early last month they received a common corporate identity.

Under the new system the opera and the ballet will change their names to Opera Vlaanderen and Ballet Vlaanderen, respectively. The logo for the common organisation includes the names of both as well as a stylised letter K. The two ensembles will use logos derived from the corporate one.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

WE TV is a middle-sized American cable TV network aimed at women, owned by AMC Networks. It started life in 1997 as a movie channel called Romance Classics before morphing into a more general women's channel called "Women's Entertainment", later shortened to its current name.

Recently, its focus has been broadened to be more inclusive and yesterday, June 2, AMC Networks unveiled new branding for WE to reflect this change. This is done by focusing on the inclusive word "we". The logo is very simple, consisting of the letters W and E and underscored to make it a proper logo. It can be included in exclamations and calls to action such as "aWEsome" and "tWEet".

New graphics are being developed with Buenos Aires-based Eloisa Iturbe Studio. A press release indicates the new look will not launch until this autumn. (Apologies for the poor resolution logo.)

Dubai is the largest city of the United Arab Emirates. About a month ago, on May 5 at the Arabian Travel Market, the contry's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum launched a new brand identity to market the city to tourists.

The logo is a combination of the city name written in both Arabic and Latin script.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Embraco is a leading maker of refrigeration compressor, based in Brazil. Back in March, the company unveiled a new compressor called Wisemotion, which is billed as the world' first oil-free compressor. The branding for this compressor, including name and visual identity, was developed by Interbrand São Paolo.

The name should reflect the intelligence and innovation behind the new product. The logo uses simple custom typography inspired by the product, with a stylised E to convey motion.